Mr. Jam

We got Sethie a "Word Whammer" for his birthday, which is basically a high tech version of those little refrigerator letter magnets they had when I was a kid. I remember arranging those dinky little plastic letters into strings and then asking my mom what word I had made. She'd glance at the fridge and say, "That doesn't make a word." I was extremely frustrated by this. They fit the word-making algorithm I had studied from books! Consonant-vowel-consonant, etc.!

Well, now pre-readers needn't wonder! Put any three letter string into the "Word Whammer" and it will tell you if you made a word. It will also sound out the letters, even if you didn't manage to accomplish wordage (except where, as the manual says, "Certain letter combinations may be found to be offensive", so no danger of Junior learning any four-letter words with three-letter accidental misspellings). Where was this wizardry when I needed it?

Anyway, T. uses it a lot more than Sethie because he's learning this stuff in kindergarten now, but Sethie does like to line up the letters and he does know most of their names and sounds. But in general he spells "GXAHER", "PYEQWNAQ", and that sort of thing. I showed him yesterday that the magnets also stick to the dishwasher, then came back a little while later to find this:

I'm not saying it means something, but doesn't it feel like it should? Cue up the opening music for an Inspector Lynley mystery...

After Sethie saw me get out the camera to photograph his enigmatic creation, he immediately wanted in.

Death to Holiday Schmaltz

Richard Paul Evans wants you to have a very Schmaltzy Christmas

Also, download his free discussion guides, in case his 

heartwarming hammer didn't hit you over the head hard 

enough while you were reading his books.

WARNING WARNING WARNING--this post is very angry and not suitable for everyone. Rated H for Hate. If you have ever read a Richard Paul Evans-style book and liked it, or you're not sure what "Richard Paul Evans-style" means, then I wouldn't read any further. Misanthropists, follow me.

It's that time of year again, what with its roast turkeys, yule logs, tree lightings, and whatnot. I actually love Christmas. It is, hands down, my favorite holiday. The day after Thanksgiving, I break out the Christmas music and listen to it constantly--much to Nate's consternation. We go out to a tree farm the first week of every December to get our tree, singing carols, and warming ourselves with hot, mulled cider (future recipe to be posted!). I actually buy most of my Christmas presents in October and November. I have been known to buy them as early as July. So I am no humbugger! I love Christmas, but this year, rather than put up a wreath, I would really like to take out my nailgun and do like Luther: hang all my complaints on the door, preferably right through their cloying, schmaltzy noggins.

I am referring to a specific brand of entertainment that brings to bear all its tear-jerky, ooey-gooey, "True Meaning of Christmas" hooey in order to shake free from us some form of monetary compensation. I dislike this sort of thing on principle--you may have noticed the posts on exploiting notions of Old Hawaii and the Amish for profit in the past--but I especially dislike schmaltz. I believe the purveyors of schmaltz are a lost chapter of Dante's Inferno. Their level of hell is filled with gold coins covered in vomit, making them too slippery for them to grasp, but eternally try to grasp them, they will.

Okay, for everyone still with me after that last line, let me backtrack. What is "schmaltz" anyway? Technically, the term is derived from the Yiddish word for liquid chicken fat, as in "scoop all the schmaltz off the top of the soup before you serve it". So consider the reaction of a person fed liquid chicken fat: it glides down very easily, but the moment you consume it, you start to feel really disgusted.

A writer's workshop I once attended had this to say about truly effective writing: avoid "emotional grab words", words like "mother", "father", "love", "life", "death", "cancer", etc. These are schmaltz. Anyone can cobble them together into a cliched, tear-jerking product designed to prey on our desire to feel inspired, on our weakness for the gushy and heartwarming.

No worse example of Holiday Schmaltz can be observed than this "#1 Hit!" that has probably started already clogging up radio stations with its liquid chicken fatty goo:

The Christmas Shoes

It was almost Christmas time

There I stood in another line

Trying to buy that last gift or two

Not really in the Christmas mood

Standing right in front of me 

Was a little boy waiting anxiously

Pacing around like little boys do

And in his hands he held

A pair of shoes

And his clothes were worn and old

He was dirty from head to toe

And when it came his time to pay

I couldn't believe what I heard him say

Sir I wanna buy these shoes for my Momma please

It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size

Could you hurry Sir?

Daddy says there's not much time

You see, she's been sick for quite a while

And I know these shoes will make her smile

And I want her to look beautiful

If Momma meets Jesus, tonight.

They counted pennies for what seem like years

And cashier says son there's not enough here

He searches is pockets frantically 

And he turned and he looked at me

And he said Momma made Christmas good at our house

Most years she just did without

Tell me Sir

What am I gonna do?

Some how I’ve got to buy her these Christmas shoes

So I layed the money down

I just had to help him out

And I'll never forget

The look on his face

When he said Momma's gonna look so great.

Sir I wanna buy these shoes, for my Momma please

It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size

Could you hurry Sir?

Daddy says there's not much time

You see, she's been sick for quite a while

And I know these shoes will make her smile

And I want her to look beautiful,

If Momma meets Jesus tonight.

I knew I caught a glimpse of heavens love as he thanked me and ran out. 

I know that God had sent that little boy to remind me

What Christmas is all about

Sir I wanna buy these shoes for my Momma please

It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size

Could you hurry Sir?

Daddy says there's not much time

You see she's been sick for quite a while

And I know these shoes will make her smile

And I want her to look beautiful

If Momma meets Jesus tonight

I want her to look beautiful

If Momma meets Jesus tonight

If you aren't sure exactly what's wrong with this song, you are probably also the kind of person who has been forwarding me "inspirational" (and likely false) stories over email. Let us dissect together all the ways in which this fits the capital-S "Schmaltz" qualification.

Note the emotional grab words: Momma, little boy, ragged clothes, Jesus, "Please sir", "sick for quite awhile", Christmas Eve...the list goes on. We can presume the self-absorbed protagonist of the song would not have noticed an ugly older man dressed in secondhand J. Crew trying to buy some shoes for his flu'ish second cousin, even if the poor man also couldn't come up with the requisite change. He'd be thinking, "Hurry it up, buddy. I got to be at a Handel's Messiah recital in fifteen minutes."

But let's nevermind that. In fact, let's nevermind that the protagonist's act of good will is to finish paying for the shoes, which are, we can presume, not exactly Christian Louboutins or anything, and then to watch the kid leave, thinking to himself, "God sent that little boy here to teach me about the true meaning of Christmas." Yes, sir, that little boy's entire craptacular life is just so you, the cynic, can have a moment to appreciate everything that makes your life super. Now he has served his purpose and can disappear off into the mist from whence he came and you can go home in your Porsche whistling, Do You Hear What I Hear?

No. What I hate most about schmaltz is that it ignores the rules of the real world. It manipulates and distorts in order to wring the most anguish from its subject and, in turn, the most bucks from us. We are buying big fat Christmas Shoes for NewSong, who probably have enough to pay for some themselves and have likely never been in the company of a dirty urchin whose mother is dying of some unspecified illness on the same night Santa is supposed to be delivering presents around the world to luckier children.

Notice that the kid is "dirty from head to toe". Does he not have a bathtub at home? Or even a hose outside to rinse himself off with? As P.J. O'Rourke has pointed out, even the poorest of the poor in Tanzania manage to keep their clothes clean. We'll give the ragged clothes a pass, even though Dicken's London, this isn't. But why is this child even out on Christmas Eve at night by himself? No child of semi-self-reliant age (let's go with 9, 10, or above) would be as rube'ish as this kid is to the fate of his mother and how much shoes are actually going to help when she's writhing around in her last few minutes on this earth. My five-year-old might be likely to conclude that shoes are the way to go if his "Daddy" tells him I don't have much time. He is not allowed out alone at any store, especially after dark. Let's hope a child a little older than that would think, "Oh, medicine! Doctors! Wrongful death lawsuit!" Well, maybe not the last one, then again, these days...

The narrator shows no interest in these questions. Dirty, out alone, mother dying, or at least someone named "Daddy" told him so...well, how can I help? I can buy him the shoes! Yes! As this post is indicating, I'm fairly misanthropic, but I even get nervous when I see little kids by themselves. I want to know where their parents are. If they were to tell me their mom is dying, I'm probably going to get even more nervous. I might phone 911. Or Social Services. Or do anything other than just fork over a ten for some Payless pumps to accompany mommy's death rattle.

Obviously, as these reviews on Amazon show, I'm in the minority on this song. Ditto any and all books by Richard Paul Evans who has had, count them, TWELVE bestselling novels, starting with The Christmas Box which wrung as much "True Meaning of Christmas" as you can out of a dead child. I'm getting tired of ranting here--though I have boatloads of material on Evans, including his "buy my writing and financial advice" side careers--but if you've managed to make it this far, you're probably tired, too, so I'll end it here with a quote from Evans' website which fair-oozes schmaltz:

"Of his success, Evans says: ‘The material achievements of The Christmas Box will never convey its true success, the lives it has changed, the families brought closer together, the mothers and fathers who suddenly understand the pricelessness of their children’s fleeting childhood. I share the message of this book with you in hopes that in some way, you might be, as I was, enlightened.’"

Evans: "I hope you will be as enlightened as I was by my own book." Schmaltz lift thy sceptor! We have crowned your everlasting King!

Long Long Time Ago...

Well, only about a month ago. Since I've already committed the mortal sin of doing a post based on events that happened in the (semi-) distant past, I thought I'd post a few videos of our fall adventures. Therefore you can randomly sample our occasionally-taped family happiness! Or something like that. It's late. I'm punchy. On with the videos:

T. lets his fingers do the dancing at Terhune Orchards

Why do I ask how the cow likes it? I don't know. (@Terhune Orchards)

An existentialist work on the inherent variability in our lives and how 

quickly we tire of our own pleasures. Either that, or I've got meningitis

Halloween

I realize Halloween was a week ago, but for those of you who are still in chocolate withdrawal, here are some reminders of the wondrous holiday where grown-ups inexplicably give you gobs of candy just because you showed up at their door with a costume and a bag.

On that note: our friend Tyler (seen below in all his Billy Mays glory) said that when he was about seven, he wanted to go on a candy bender and decided to trick-or-treat in July. He had the first door slammed in his face at which he point he started to think maybe it really was just the one day that adults lose their minds and give out sugar to any random kid who shows up.

T. the Ninja (hyah!) in the Halloween parade at his elementary school

Our friends, the Jacobs, at our place before trick-or-treating. 

Tyler really does bear a frightening resemblance to Billy Mays and

Marylynn does the emo teenager look pretty well. The little black

witch-shaped shadow in the back is their daughter Cricket, 

T.'s buddy, and the unicorn-do Superman in front is Buster.

Ninja Sethie, Ninja Thomas, Superman Buster, and Witch Cricket.

The green arms are mine, desperately trying to keep Seth from

removing his Ninja mask and revealing his secret identity (that of

angry, over-heated two-year-old who hates stuff on his head).

The kids wait at a door for that most magical event: the

presentation of the candy! Note that S. is sans Ninja mask.

You just can't keep that kid dressed. It did make him SLIGHTLY

easier to see in the dark, especially since he refused to hold any

kind of light source. We should have just strung reflective tape

on his back, I suppose, but that would have, kind of, ruined

that whole "Ninja" aesthetic we were going for:

"Hey, what's that?"

"Don't know. Looks like a ninja."

"But he's wearing reflective tape."

"Guess he didn't want to get run over while crossing the street."

"Yeah, you can't be too careful these days---aaiiigggh!" (destroyed by Ninja star).

New Day

Well, my guy didn't win, but I am always happily amazed every time we finish an election and see what a true democratic process shows the world.  Even in 2000, with all the drama in Florida, people calmly went about their business. There was no rioting in the streets, no threats of a revolution, no fear from either side that the eventual winner would route out his opponent's supporters. These things still happen all over the world, even in places where "elections" occur.

But not here. Today will be the same as yesterday. We fight with votes and we concede with grace. And we pray for our new president, Barack Obama, to do the right thing. 

I feel very blessed to be American. This is the greatest country in the history of the world and we ought to be grateful every day for the opportunity to be its citizens.

God Bless America, land that I love.

My two cents

Well, I just went to my local polling station and yanked the lever for McCain (actually, it was a cool electronic ballot with a computer keyboard for write-in candidates. I almost wrote in "Romney", but restrained myself).

Like my buddy, Grumpator, I wanted to just add my last two cents on the election and will foreswear political postings in the future (there's plenty of that elsewhere for anyone who is interested). This article in National Review describes pretty much how I feel going into the election and while I'm not really excited about McCain, I still feel he is the best choice under the circumstances.

From the article:

"McCain has a solid record of opposing economically damaging tax increases. He has always opposed abortion. He has advanced a creative free-market health-care policy...He is a scourge of wasteful spending and a resolute free trader. He says that he will look for judges who have demonstrated their fidelity to the Constitution as written. We have our differences with McCain, as do most conservatives, on such issues as immigration and stem cells. On each of these issues, however, Obama is at least as mistaken."

I urge everybody to vote. Have a hand in your future! Give yourself the right to cheer or to complain, whatever the outcome. Apathy is our number one enemy.